Content in the Customer’s Context Drives Customer Relationships

All life on Earth evolved from water. Water is the key prerequisite for life. We humans consist of eighty percent water. What water means for all of us, that’s what content could mean for the 21st century’s buyers. An adventurous hypothesis? Maybe. Let’s see what story our latest CSO Insights research will tell us.

How effective is client-facing content? The results are multifaceted.

In our CSO Insights 2015 Sales Enablement Optimization Study, we asked the participants to rank the effectiveness of various enablement services, such as client-facing content, in four categories: “exceeds expectations,” “meets expectations,” “needs improvement,” and, the lowest ranking, “needs major redesign.”

The content types that showed the biggest need for major redesign (26.5%) and improvement (45.7%) were business value/ROI justification tools. The next content asset, third-party endorsements, follows with less need for major redesign (18.9%) but the same need for improvement (45.7%). Email templates, customer case studies, and presentations showed a similar result, with more than 50% of both, need for improvement and major redesign.

Interestingly, the most effective client-facing content type was the technical product presentation (“meets expectations” and “exceeds expectations” aggregated at 60.1%), followed by product collateral (51.9%) and proposal templates (50.9%). References and customer presentations show a multifaceted result. While they seem to be the content types with the highest “exceeds expectations” result (10.2% and 9.9%), they also show considerable needs for major redesign (16% and 15%).

The transformation from product-selling approaches to more value and result-oriented sales approaches is still the main challenge in many organizations across all industries. And that’s what we see in the data. These data points have also incorporated what salespeople are used to using rather than what they should be using. This challenge, here focused on client-facing content habits, is not only a sales challenge, but it’s also an enablement, content strategy, and content management issue.

Let’s keep this multifaceted information in our minds, and look at the business impact of effective-rated, or rather ineffective-rated, client-facing content.

The effectiveness of client-facing content impacts the relationship organizations can develop with their customers.

Now, what impacts effective content? How do we get there? What hinders organizations from creating effective content?Overall, there is a significant correlation between the effectiveness of client-facing content and the level of relationships that can be achieved with clients. The more effective client-facing content is, the more likely providers can develop a high-level relationship with their customers as you can see here. Content ranked as “meets expectations” or “exceeds expectations” is more likely to lead to a strategic partnership (63%) or a strategic contributor role (59%). In this “effective content” category, only 29% ended up as a preferred supplier or as a supplier (13%). Instead, content that is ranked as “needs improvements” or “needs major redesign” makes it very hard to develop a high-value relationship with clients such as strategic contributor (22%) or strategic partner (9%). With ineffective content, it’s more likely to end up as preferred supplier (45%) or supplier (60%). Simply look at the two different stair-step patterns in the chart here. The difference is quite significant.

The alignment of internal processes and frameworks to the customer’s journey is a prerequisite to creating effective content.

According to our data, organizations made lots of progress in aligning their internal processes to the customer’s journey: 54% reported to be mostly aligned, 19% to be fully aligned, 22% to be minimally aligned, and 5% not aligned at all. Overall, the high degree of alignment is surprising. Looking deeper in the data and in some of the interviews we made, it turns out that even if organizations have made some of the customer’s journey mapping exercises, it does not necessarily mean that they use these results on a regular basis in their sales process implementations and their enablement frameworks.

This fact might be one of the reasons why even a relatively high degree of alignment does not necessarily translate into effective enablement services, designed with the customer’s journey at the core. The time distance from mapping to translating to seeing measurable results might also be a reason many organizations seem to be in the middle of this transition.

Content matters. Content in the customer’s context matters even more. A well executed “outside-in” strategy makes the difference.

As the data says, the quality of client-facing content is a key element that significantly impacts the level of relationship you can achieve with your customers. The quality of your client-facing content is determined by your ability to tell your story from THEIR perspective (their customer’s journey, their context, their challenges, etc.), and not from the perspective of your products and services. Because customers don’t buy products. What they buy is the value they can achieve with your products and services. Now, what is the implication of this analysis?

Client-facing content must become a top priority on every sales leader’s strategic agenda

Having client-facing content on top of the sales leader’s agenda opens a window of opportunity for enablement leaders to establish a) an overall customer-core strategy and b) a sales force enablement framework with the customer’s journey at the core.

Highly effective customer-facing content that covers the entire customer’s journey is a must-have ingredient to remain successful in an ever-changing, buyer-driven world.

This article was first published over @ Top Sales Magazine April edition.